Screen options in WordPress allow you to customize the the admin panel look.
You can access screen otpions from the main admin page (Dashboard) and enable/disable some blocks (comments, news etc. ) Use the checkboxes to enable or disable the blocks.
You can also use the Screen Layout radio buttons and define the admin panel columns.
Similar Screen options are available for the post/page editing screen. There you can enable/disable the post configuration blocks such as (excerpt, slug, comments etc)